ASSESSING NUCLEIC ACID TESTING VERSUS ELISA FOR BLOOD VIRUSES DETECTION IN SOME BLOOD BANKS

Abstract

The safety of blood products is one of the major issues in the area of transfusion medicine. Screening of blood donors for transmissible agents play a major role to decrease the risk of transfusion of infected units. Firstly, testing of antibody/or antigen markers of blood borne pathogens was established. However, limitation of these serological techniques including window period between infection time and detection time, and antigenic variability enhance implementation of NAT. NAT is a highly sensitive and advanced molecular technique. It is based on amplification of target regions of viral RNA or DNA and detects them earlier than other screening methods which thus reducing the window period for HBV, HCV and HIV to 8, 7 and 9 days respectively. NAT blood screening system was originally intended to complement serological screening for detection of donations infectious for those viruses.